


The Stranger

by kuchi



Category: Dark Matter - Michelle Paver
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comes Back Wrong, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 05:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17420396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuchi/pseuds/kuchi
Summary: Jack settles into life in London after the expedition, but the return of Gus pulls him astray in what he feels is a perfect way. Until it isn't.





	The Stranger

**Author's Note:**

> warnings in end notes 
> 
> BIG SHOUTOUT to [greenbucket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket) for coming up with the idea for this fic with me, beta-ing, and happy birthday, and this is for you!!!

 

It was an afternoon in November when Gus knocked on my door. I had been sifting through the papers that day. Ever since my return from Oxford, Algie had been having them delivered to my flat. It was nice, the routine. I got up every morning, brewed myself coffee and settled in one of the old chairs at the dining table to read the news. It made me feel rather like an old man, which at this point, I honestly didn't mind.

The Bloomsbury flat was my main haunt in those days. It was far smaller than any place in Tooting, but far grander too. I wasn't renting, technically, it was one of Gus' parents' apartments in the city. I liked it, actually, despite my usual disinclination for the kind of folk that tended to live in these townhouses. There was almost a humdrum normalcy to the neat streets here, and when my walks with Isaak took me past the university students I was filled with a longing for my own student days. How little you knew then, Jack.

Isaak was instantly alert at my feet at the ring of the doorbell. He'd been bothering a poor spider that had made its home in the corner of the leg of the dining table.

Gus was dripping wet when I open the door. The wind whipped against my face and I squinted through the discomfort.

_Gus._

What in the -?

"Jack," he insisted, eyes bright. I didn't have a moment to register what was in front of me before he slid past me into the room. "I heard you were back here. It's quite the upgrade. I mean, it's not like I expected you to be shacked up in Kensington Palace, but- "

"Gus? Is it you?"

He stopped short with a bark of a laugh. My knees could have buckled at the sound. What had it been? A year? A lifetime?

"Of course it's me, Jack. Here, you look quite ruffled, old friend."

I made an aborted movement to reach for his shoulder. This wasn't real - this couldn't be what I -

"Jack," he said, laughing again. His gloved hands squeezed my upper arms giddily. "Jack, it's me."

It was  _him._

–

I asked questions slowly. Gus' rescue and subsequent recovery had apparently been so long and arduous that once he did come to, he hadn't wanted to notify any of us on the chance that it turned out to simply end up as a false hope.

He chuckled rather darkly recounting that. "I hadn't thought myself so pragmatic, Jack. Perhaps I got that from you."

My face warmed like I never thought it would again.

He told me that he had spent over half a year at Longyearbyen before he even dared to get on a ship and make the journey back to England. As he recounted this remarkable story, there was a part of me that couldn't quite believe it, but I didn't dwell on it. I  _couldn't_ dwell on it.

I felt like I'd been given a second chance. Godforsaken, haunted Jack, doomed to live out my days in guilt and terror, and yet here, before my eyes, was the last thing I expected. The golden-haired object of every one of those thoughts that had haunted each empty moment of my day since I returned from the expedition.

"Tea? Whiskey?" I asked, feeling a little bit like I was a puttering housewife. A part of me wanted to lunge myself at him, another to sit and stare, and yet another to just weep with wonder, and the result of all this was that I couldn't make myself sit still.

"Oh, whiskey, please," Gus said jovially. He glanced around the room, those solid blue eyes not even blinking.

I couldn't help but feel embarrassed at the state of the apartment. Dust piled thick on every surface. Isaak's spider wasn't the only one there - as I looked, I found cobwebs lurking in so many untouched corners. I hadn't exactly been in a state of mind to keep up any kind of regular cleaning schedule and the girl that Mr and Mrs Balfour hired to come and sweep once a week was on her holiday.

There was nothing for us to do but catch up. I felt chuffed that he came to me, first, before anyone else. I tried to polish what I had been up to for the past few months, but when that ran out of steam (and it did quickly - not much to do in a sanatorium and neither in one corner of London, and we both knew why I hadn't ventured further yet) I tried to tell him a little about Algie, too, and about what his parents had been doing for me.

Gus barely seemed interested in that. I had noticed that somewhere in this time we had shifted so that instead of sitting across from each other with the dining table between us, my chair was just perpendicular to his, only inches between our knees. Gus' eyes were eager and boyish and they never seemed to leave mine. My breath caught at just how much he looked like the Gus in my head, the one in my better dreams.

"It's so good to see you, Jack," he said. I felt the air become still around me. "I never thought I would get to see you again."

I couldn't think of a reply to that. I nodded guilelessly, the whiskey up to my ears, clasping my hand over his on the table.

"Do you… do you think I could stay here a bit," he said. It wasn't really phrased like a question.

I looked at my watch. Three hours, we had been sitting there. It felt like ten minutes.

"Of course you can," I scrambled to say. "Of course, Gus. Stay as long as you like."

He grinned wide with genuine surprise when I said that. "Really?"

I thought of his diary. It dawned on me for a moment (only for a moment, though, and looking at his brilliant face, I hardly dared to entertain the notion) that I might not be the only one given a second chance at something here.

I noticed from the way Gus was speaking that he hadn't been to see his parents yet. I wondered if I should give him a nudge to notify them. After everything they had done for me, I felt quite warm at the thought of what their faces would look like when they found their son alive and well, not perished in the Arctic as they thought. I should have called Algie, at the very least.

I glanced over at Gus. He was taking a long sip of the whiskey. His hair shone in the light from the fireplace. His face was impossibly smooth, not aged even a day since the end of the expedition, unlike mine. I suppose it  _was_  me who had suffered the most, in the end. The short beard was just like the one he was wearing before we had set out. I remembered thinking back then how he must have been wearing it to make himself look older. Now he looked even younger than me, despite the fact that I was clean shaven for a year. One of the few kinds of ritual cleaning that I managed to do every morning. I watched Gus's face as he downed the glass and then went to pour himself another shot. His strong chin, the almost-glint of the square lines of his jaw. He really was as handsome as ever.

I felt a hope so giddy rise in me that I could cry. I returned his glorious grin. I thought to myself, Algie could wait.

–

I didn't think, after everything that had happened, that I could sensibly hide what I felt for Gus, and at that point there was no part of me that wanted to. The next two days went by like a dream - the kind of dream I never thought I was capable of having ever again, let alone living. We strolled around London the first day and I showed Gus my few haunts and caught him up to the news of the day. There was war coming - inevitably, now. But even that couldn't rid me of the spring in my step, and strangely it didn't seem to bother Gus either. Gus was cool and charming even in that current state as a temporary recluse from society; he seemed more at home in our surroundings than I was. He didn't act like he had been away from London for even a day, sure-footed and taking in each sight and stop in our journey evenly and easily.

I decided that that evening had to be the one where I swallowed my trepidation. I think I feared that if I didn't manage to tell him on the first night, when all my longing was a reopened scab, that I wouldn't be able to tell him at all.

We found ourselves in an alleyway off the main streets just off the river - Gus insisted that we dine in his favourite place in the Strand. The air here was chilly and the light of the street lamps didn't quite reach. I was telling Gus about how we would have to wander the around the College museums one day soon - "I'm sure it won't be anything like Cambridge, but I know specimens so unique here they'll surprise you," - but all of a sudden, Gus' expression, normally so alert, became indifferent. His face went blank, staring into mine.

My words died on my lips.

Maybe I was being dramatic, maybe I was even being romantic, but Gus' next movement snatched the breath from my lungs. His arm grabbed onto my coat and pushed me without effort against the brick wall. I felt almost like I was being lifted off my feet.

Immediately, my feet hit the ground and I became too aware of myself, of where we were, how  _close_  we were. Gus didn't seem to care. His gaze burned me like a physical thing though it was too dark to even tell where his eyes were looking.

"Look here, Jack," he said frankly. There was a nervous tilt to his voice that raised my heartbeat so unreasonably. "I don't know if I am imagining things," he lowered it again, and my inhibition with it, "and I hope to God I'm not - there's something here between us that I need to tell you. You need to know this - "

I grabbed him by his lapel. Gus, strangely heavy, didn't budge an inch but I didn't need to adjust to that because I simply propelled myself forward instead until I was kissing him. He put his arms around me, already open and as sturdy as marble, like he had predicted down to the second what was coming.

I was exalted. I felt his presence permeating through me, through every inch of me, right down into my boots. I was right. I was  _right_. I could finally confirm it - everything I felt, back then, right now - it was all real.

I took him back to the flat that night and I didn't let him leave my sight. I didn't let him go until I had kissed him a great deal more, until I'd seen everything about him, and every part of him, and even after that I didn't release him, relishing every place where he clung to me.

Gus did the same.

We fell into a rhythm. Every night, we would do our own little tasks by the fire, me with my physics books and Gus with my newspapers, fixated on getting familiar with the ever-changing news. Gus hoarded the heat of the fireplace but he wouldn't ever tend to it. I joked that he's never had to, and he didn't actually know what you were even supposed to do with a fireplace poker that wasn't made of brass and gilded with a crest of arms. Gus laughed good-naturedly, and told me that he preferred seeing me do it - doing a bit of toil for his comfort, that is. I told him he was a country pillock, which made Gus only cackle more. I kissed him because I wanted to, and he didn't have much argument left in him after that.

I know I said it before. But it really did feel like a second chance.

–

There with Gus, spending our days reading and studying and going around town and just being together, I felt like I forgot everything of my old life. Of waking and reading the paper and eating bread most meals, until I was sleepy again; repeating it all so that the only time I was out in the world, now that I had stopped going to the therapist, was when I took Isaak on his daily walk.

Isaak didn't seem to like Gus yet, but that wasn't too unexpected. He'd been rather guarded towards everyone but me ever since he came out of quarantine. Lately, whenever we came back home at the end of the day, he met us at the door with uncharacteristically vicious barks.

It was a small headache compared to what Gus' presence did for me.

We even walked down to the pictures once or twice. The flashy new  _Odeon_  down in Leicester Square, milling with men and women ( _not_ rich men and women, I realised) did a great deal to remind me of how out of touch I had been with things, maybe even since before the expedition. Once we went around Christmas time, and we were subjected to  _A Christmas Carol_ , apropos of the time of year. I didn't even mind the silly morals and the poor little poor children with Gus next to me.

He glowed in the light that the scratchy pictures reflected back to us in the seats. The light from the changing of the scenery picked out the hard, beautiful planes of his face, and hid them again, like it had seen him and then become too shy to keep looking. Gus was the perfect audience. He laughed at the right time, looked tender and sad at the right time, and feigned surprise at exactly the right times.

Outside, I let him walk ahead of me. "Gus," I said. "Humour me for a minute."

He turned back before I finished my sentence, eyes glinting in the sun.

I smiled only a little self-deprecatingly at him. "Do you think I could ever become like him? Like that Scrooge? I sure felt myself going that way, bef-"

Gus laughed loudly and stopped short. "I wouldn't let that happen."

I coughed in surprise. "What? What do you mean?"

I felt suddenly like I had missed something - in his eyes, in his aspect - like a second of time had blinked in and out of existence without taking me in it.

His tone and his track changed. "Never, Jack," he said. "Someone so determined and strong as you could never become so sour." His voice was fierce. He sounded hurt that I even suggested such a thing, "You are a special kind of person."

–

We carried on like that. In those weeks, I experienced a kind of bliss that I thought I would never feel, not again, yet one that I was slowly regaining more and more.

Well, besides one thing. I had half a mind to take Isaak back to the vet - the only thing stopping me being how much I knew he hated it - because I was starting to suspect that he was actually sick in some way. The barking continued, and he became afraid, shrinking away into the corner when I tried to approach him. I stayed away, despite my hurt. I knew that feeling all too well. Maybe he needed time, just like I did.

Tonight, I had a brief respite; he was quiet. Only a mewl or two could be heard from outside the bedroom. Thank God for it too, because I hadn't been too well myself. January was bang in the middle of the flu season, after all.

Gus, despite being around my sickly being for a week now, appeared as spry as ever. Somehow that didn't surprise me.

This night was particularly bad. I hadn't taken a sleeping draught in months, but I was running a fever that hadn't let me get a decent night's rest in two days, and I thought that was enough cause for an exception. I laid under two layers of blankets, Gus at my side.

There was an insistent throbbing in my head that hadn't let up all day. Gus, bless him, was doing his best to relieve me. I felt his hand cool on my forehead sometimes, caressing my arm over the blankets at other times; though I wasn't alert enough to tell when he switched from what. What would I be right now, without him?

The lamp in the corner of the table kept catching my sore eyes. Every flicker too bright felt like an assault directly to my brain.

"Feel any better, Jack?" Gus whispered. I peered at his face in the half-light - tired, like mine, but his brow tinged with worry.

"Turn off that damn lamp," I told him, not unkindly, my speech slurred and slow with sleep. My ire was directed at the throbbing in my head and the thing making it worse, rather than him. I trusted him to understand that.

Gus twitched in acknowledgement. I could tell he was comfortable next to me. Outside, the rain pattered feebly on the windowpane.

I noticed I was getting sleepier. The draught was taking effect. 

Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, I saw, or even felt, the light extinguish. The ensuing darkness drew a sense of calm over my tired eyes; the weight of Gus' arm solid and snug against mine. Did he get back into bed so quickly after doing that? It's silly, but I thought I almost saw him reach those few metres across the room over to the desk without even leaving my side. Just a long stretch of the arm.

My spine was cold. The cycle of fever. I flushed and shivered it off; I was too close to the precipice of sleep to do anything else.

–

It turned out I had forgotten to contact Algie for two months. We had got into a simple routine since we returned to England: I would write him once a fortnight, he would write me back. Sometimes, he would come over and smoke and we would catch up.

We never talked about Gruhuken: we didn't need to.

I wondered if it was that I had misjudged him from the start. But neither of us were who we were before the expedition, so I had no way to know if that was right, and no reason to dwell on it. He'd done a lot for me. Between Algie and Gus' parents, I had little that I needed to take of myself, and I was highly aware of the fact.

I should have been thrilled for him to know of Gus' return. Instead, when Algie finally came to the flat to check on me near the end of January, I felt guilty, for reasons I couldn't quite pinpoint.

Gus opened the door. I glimpsed Algie's face for that first instant before recognition hit. He looked shaken. Had I too had the same expression? I was a little surprised that Gus hadn't contacted him yet himself. They were schoolfriends.

But I knew just as well as Gus did what it felt like to come back a ghost. He needed time.

"Algie, old man!"

"Gus?" came the sputtered reply. I felt so sorry for poor Algie.

I let them catch up on their own, resigning myself to my bedroom out of respect (that's what I told myself). It hadn't been getting much colder, but Gus seemed to never want to stray too far from the fireplace in the living room. I worried that he was scared of even the possibility of cold.

Again, something I knew all too well.

An hour more, and I joined them for a drink.

"Oh, by the way, Jack, some bugger from the  _Herald_  keeps asking me for a story," Algie said. He looked uncomfortable. "They - want to talk to you, specifically."

My heart seized with a chill.  _Every time_  I thought I could bear the notion -

"Why?" came Gus' sharp voice, before I could even ask Algie to elaborate (not that I wanted him to). I looked at him: the fireglow left his eyes and they were cold and grey as steel.

Algie grumbled and shifted in his chair, causing it to creak. "I fear I know exactly how they want to spin it," he said quickly. "I told them very sternly that it wasn't happening."

Gus put his glass down so loudly it made Algie jump. "Is that really your choice, Algie?"

" _Gus_ -" I started. He was stiff as a board.

Algie was almost cowering. I must say, I was relieved by what he had said - and flooded with some kind of affection for him. Gus' strange interruption left me cold.

"Gus, that's exactly what he should have said," I said quickly. I shot Algie a pleading look: I didn't understand either.

"Why, are you his middleman?" Gus asked Algie, ignoring me.

Algie harrumphed and explained it away flippantly. I tried to change the topic of conversation as quickly as I could, and Gus returned to normal after a few pointed looks, but I could sense a quiet unease in Algie from then on, up to the moment that he left. I myself was completely taken aback.

Later, I confronted Gus as he was getting ready for bed.

"Gus! What was that out there?"

He stiffened. "I didn't like him making your decisions for you."

I had no idea where this was coming from. " _What_ decisions? What the hell are you talking about? You didn't think that since the year we've been back, there haven't been a dozen of these requests, that we've decided between us how we deal with them?"

I was livid; the whole evening, I realised, his treatment of Algie had been nagging me. I was confused - Gus was so pleasant for weeks, and this encounter which should have been a delight to see had turned out so bizarrely hostile on his part.

"You really didn't let Algie know you were back this whole time, either?" I asked. Jesus. I wasn't his keeper, was I? "What about your parents?"

Gus glared out of the window. "I've written to them," he said mechanically.

He looked down into his lap sadly. "You know I'm only worried for you, Jack," he said quietly. "No one -  _saw_ as much as you did," he looked up at me again, eyes round and pleading. "Not even me."

I felt my annoyance dissolve away. Dread mingled with sympathy at those words. Sighing, I went to him and put my arms around him.

I felt shaken in all honesty. I couldn't keep up with the changes in Gus' mood; or my own reaction to them. I couldn't read him.

–

The little outburst with Algie continued to bother me, I couldn't help it. Gus wasn't the kind of person to treat anyone like that, let alone his best friend.

I tried to put it to the back of my mind. January got colder. At the end of the month, it was snowing outside, as it had been for days. Isaak was restless. I had finally given in and let him out to the little enclosure between this block of flats and the next, without me, something which I was still hesitant about after all these months.

Gus and I were in the dining room. We had run out of things to do indoors. I was reading the news for the third time. More turmoil in France and Germany; no noise from Parliament. Gus was studying a book of animal physiology with mild interest. He had mentioned that he was thinking of returning to university in some form, once he felt a little more in the swing of things.

I stared at the ceiling.

"Here, Gus," I said, nodding towards the book. "Let me test you."

"Jack," he said admonishingly. "You really think I need your help to identify organs?"

"If you're so sure, it won't be hard, will it?" I said with a grin.

He slid the book over with a disarming smile. I flipped it open. The drawings were very clean and shapen, too neat. I'd always thought that about anatomical drawings. I thought of Gus' sketches in his old notebook. I preferred those. Much rougher lines, yet they seemed to capture the reality of the shapes much more than these images did.

"Hmm.. Sheep stomach?" I enquired.

"The components of a rumen digestive system, Jack?" Gus said smarmily. "All right."

He listed them off lazily.  _Intestine, abomasum, reticulum, omasum, rumen._ Big grin.

"You were just reading that," I said teasingly.

A flicker of annoyance passed in his eyes. I guess I wasn't the only one getting tired of being barred up inside.

"Here," I said, flipping over to another section. I picked out something I knew he knew - from one of our idle conversations back in that cabin; from my observations of his observations - so it really would be a test of memory. "How about something simple. Types of bird feet."

Gus stared blankly for a long moment. He twisted his expression into a little grimace - one of defeat, then apology. "Hmm…" he said. "You know, why don't we eat. I'm getting a bit sick of biology."

"Come on, Gus," I knew he knew this. And I wanted him to feel something of his old self. Just a little prompting might help. "There's the lonely didactyl foot… only an ostrich has those."

Gus made a little noise of discontent. "I don't know, Jack."

"Come on, just try." I don't know why I pushed it. I was  _sure_ \- he had to know it, it was basic, as he'd told me himself once, when I enquired what part of a Cambridge biology education comprised memorising the  _extremely_  interesting toe arrangements of a bird. He'd laughed bashfully like I really had affronted him and proceeded to lecture me himself -

"No," Gus said sternly now. I looked at his eyes. There wasn't a hint of recognition in them, of our little joke.

I wanted to bring Isaak back in.

I gave an excuse, I'm not even sure of what. I strode out of the door, down the stairs quickly as I could, something primal propelling me like a train fixed on its tracks. When Isaak saw me and bounded towards me, I hugged him with my whole body, realising only then that I was releasing my first breath since the top of the stairs.

When I came back in, Gus wasn't in the dining room. It was warm and stuffy for a change. I put out the fire and made something to eat.

–

I started to think, maybe, it wasn't the best idea to let Gus stay here with me. He was becoming a little moody. He hardly went outside except when I went with him. It couldn't be doing anything good for his mood or his motivation.

_I_  had certainly needed more than a companion to get back on track after my return. I thought I'd talk to him about getting some kind of help from his parents, or even staying with them instead for a little while. I had to admit, it wasn't great for me either. I  _was_  being too reliant on him, I had noticed - on his approval, or something like that. I hated the way I had felt when I went to bring Isaak in that day.

He looked and acted and felt like himself, but sometimes- I just- I had this feeling.

The evening with Algie had been eating me up. It just wasn't something Gus would do. He never got  _angry_ at Algie, not properly, even when he should have done (a certain incident involving seals came to mind.) There was no way our being together should have affected him in such a way, if it was even that.

Or was I just remembering him wrong - how he was before? It certainly felt like it with the bird feet business.

I was probably overthinking it.

I was sure that was it.

–

Something strange happened a few nights ago. Gus and I were eating our supper when there was a terrible racket outside the window. We went to check on it. All of a sudden, the awning from the window above dislodged itself and came tumbling down. When I blinked, Gus had caught it.

A hundred pounds of cloth and steel hurtling from the sky. He shouldn't have been able to catch it, just like that.

–

The weather was getting warmer. It began to feel colder inside the house than it was outside. I kept overthinking.

There were the things about him that were impossible not to love. Not to cherish. I focused on that, so I could banish the other thoughts from my mind. Gus was here with  _me_. This was my second chance at  _being_  with him.

He was the whole stupid reason I stayed in that damn place, I was the whole stupid reason he -

We were together. Despite what I sometimes felt, we  _deserved_  to be together. I knew that.

Last night in bed, I brought up what had been on my mind. I twisted my hands in the loosening thread of the duvet, trying to word it in the right way. "Gus, do you think you'll ever move out of here? It can't be your ideal place to stay."

He turned so he was facing me. The moonlight behind him sculpted into shape the outlines of his arms, and caressed his jaw like it knew the privilege of the action.

His voice was tinged just a little with sleep. "What? I won't leave you," he said.

I shifted until I was facing him too, looking him in the eye. "Yes, but don't you want to go somewhere… a little finer?"

I watched the line of worry creep into his brow. "What's all this? You don't want us to stay together?"

"Of course I do," I sighed. I cupped his face in my hand. I couldn't bear the sight of how his expression distorted at that question, his blue eyes widening and his mouth twisting to a distressed pout. I kissed it, and then I kissed the strong line of his brow.

I didn't blame him for anything, of course I didn't. He should have been the one who blamed me, and yet.

"Maybe we could move somewhere else," I conceded. I pulled him close.

An idea -

No, Jack. Stop.  _Stop._

An idea crossed my mind that made my blood run cold.

"Hmm… that's an idea," he replied, half-asleep. "You know that I would never leave you."

I clung to him, for a change. I waited until he must have thought I was asleep. I waited and waited, my head flush against his beautiful chest. I listened to his heart beating. I counted the beats. Whenever I became too tired, something inside me would awaken me again and set me right with determination. Those thoughts I shouldn't have been having.

I did that until the sun came up and lit up the far side of the bedroom, casting the old wallpaper in light and bringing out its many imperfections. When I checked his face, periodically, it was the picture of undisturbed sleep.

By morning, my body against his was rigid.

Over breakfast, I asked him, "Slept well?"

He smiled so bashfully at me. "You know I did, Jack," he said. I smiled back, my heart hammering.

His breathing hadn't changed that night for even a moment. It was clockwork.

Gus didn't sleep.

–

Gus went out just minutes ago. I convinced him to visit with Algie for the day, maybe to make up for his rough behaviour. I waited until I heard the front door slam, and then, as if on autopilot, I was pulling on clothes and my hat and my coat and walking out of the door with only my instinct guiding me.

I went straight to the station. There were easier ways to know what I wanted to know - but somehow, I didn't quite trust any other method. I had to see them myself and ask them myself.

What are you doing, Jack?

This was stupid. This was so fucking  _stupid_.

I took the first train West and called for Gus' family's driver at once. When I got there Mrs Balfour received me with open arms, and if she was annoyed by the short notice, she did her best not to let me know.

"Is something wrong, Jack?" she said kindly, as I sat with her over tea in the salon. She told me Mr Balfour was out at the cricket club.

"Nothing, really," I said. "I was in the area to see a friend and I thought of paying you a visit."

She smiled so amiably. "Well, you're always welcome, my dear. I must say, you're looking much better."

I asked, "How are you?"

Mrs Balfour cleared her throat. "Good, Jack, thank you. It's very nice to hear from you. Since the anniversary - you know."

I spilled my tea a little bit, trying to put the cup down.

She reached for it to help me, but I politely stopped for her. I pleaded she couldn't see the colour leaving my face. I barely heard her next words. Finally I got myself together enough to look at her.

The sorrow I saw in her eyes made me hate myself. "Since November, I- " she stopped and pressed her lips together, blinking hard. "Oh, goodness. I can't believe it's been more than a year. I'm just- I'm so glad to see you're doing well, Jack."

I nodded through everything else. When it was time to leave I felt like I could have run out of there; at the same time, I felt so much sympathy for her that I found it difficult to stand properly. I bade my goodbyes. The train ride was the most alone I've felt in months. I sat next to strangers. I tried not to look too hard through the windows, where I could see nothing except solid dark. Once in London, I would go straight to the library.

–

I felt wrong, and ridiculous, but I knew what I had to do. Through my old professor at UCL that I was still in contact with, I had access to the main library. I hadn't actually gone yet, though I was always meaning to.

It felt strange to be here again. What had it been? Eight, nine years? I felt myself like an echo from the past, roamings its corners, until I happened to stumble upon the section I was searching for.

Folklore.

I picked out the oldest, thickest spine I could see. I resented the fact that I seemed to know exactly what I was looking for.

I forced myself to remember the sealer Eriksson's words. What was the phrase he had used?  _The one who walks._

I flipped the pages, dread filling me surely like a glass of cold water, until I was full, tipping over the edge. I took long breaths. My hands shook as I searched through the pages.

One who walks.

> _Aptrgangr._ Icelandic:  _aftruganga._  lit. " _again-walker._ "
> 
> See Old Norse:  _Draugr._

Yes. I remembered. I swallowed longer, rougher breaths, pulling the closest chair to me and sitting down. My head throbbed as I read and the cold only crept, crept from the page itself, up from my fingers into arms, my head, and my heart.

I read and I read. I read until my eyes swam, and then I went home to him.

–

I tried something today. I had never felt so reluctant to talk to Gus, but I had to. I made sure we were out in the living room, reading by the fire, as was our usual habit.

"Gus," I said, hoping to God that my voice was as nonchalant as I wanted it to be. "Could you stir up the fire a bit?"

His eyes were fixed on his on his book. I felt the annoyance flare up in me in parallel with fear. He was acting like he hadn't fucking heard me.

"Gus," I insisted. He must have been able to hear my heartbeat all the way from here, but I persisted.

He looked directly at me. I imagined his gaze pinning me down until I was paralysed in place. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't even feel scared.

We both knew.

And just like that, I could breathe again. Gus hummed nonchalantly, "But I'm so comfortable, Jack."

"Just do it." I must have had a death wish.

Gus' eyes glinted as he looked side-long at me. "Oh, alright," he enunciated.

He strode over and picked up the poker, tending to the fire for a slow few seconds, until the coal shifted to yield slightly bigger and warmer flames. He dropped it with a clang, patting down the front of his trousers casually.

I caught a glimpse of the red-blue-burnt flesh of his hand where he had touched the iron poker. His hands, the tilt of his body; it was all angled to give me that exact show.

–

I decided to contact Mr Eriksson.

The day after the poker incident, I sent a telegram out, asking him for any records. Newspaper accounts, hospital records, deaths and missing persons, that sort of stuff. We had a few messages of back and forth. He didn't ask many questions. He didn't even ask me why I wanted such information though I think that was more because he knew what I was after, rather than any disinterest.

I told him I only wanted a sense of closure, though of course I knew he would see right through it.

I received a pack of documents soon after. Those days I waited for the post felt like the longest of my life since the expedition.

Once I got them, I waited until I was alone. Gus was taking a bath one afternoon and I took my chance, spreading them out over the desk in the bedroom, which was the furthest from where the bath adjoined the pantry. I sifted through the headlines until one caught my eye.

_BODY WASHED UP ASHORE IN SPITSBERGEN_

I read on.  _A body, male, possibly mid-twenties to mid-thirties washed up on the shore of a small island of Spitsbergen. It remained unidentified by the Coast Guard, though it is likely, judging by the decay, that it had been up to a year since death. The news has drawn attention and speculation from many superstitious members of the community due to the peculiar position - it appeared to be sitting up as it washed up on the shore. It rests..._

My hands were shaking. I couldn't feel anything. I looked for the date.  _30th October, 1938._

Gus had come to me in November.

I made it to the toilet before I threw up my lunch.

–

I started going out without him, staying later and later, mostly at the library. It was like the moment I left the house, I was in a different world, and it became harder, more  _daunting_ , to go back. One of those nights, when I managed to convince myself to get home, it was past midnight. Gus was still up. He surprised me.

"Jack," he said, innocuously, when he saw me. "Where have you been?"

"Out," I said. "Library." I couldn't look at him. I could hardly move. All at once, the dread was up to my throat, in my eyes. Why had I come back? I could have just stayed at the library -

"Are you alright?" Gus asked. I looked at him and told him that I hadn't finished my task. I just came to get some food, and then I'd go back. I would be back in the morning, I was feeling so good about this one thread of research -

Was I testing him?  _It?_

Finally, Gus came to me and put his hand on my arm. I thought of the awning.

"If you're sure," he said, full of concern. When I looked into his eyes, I think every small piece of myself that I had recovered from the Arctic left instantaneously. They were bright and cold. I felt the depth of his desire to keep me close to him.

This is what I had let into my house, in my blind longing.

I had to go back out.

I penned a letter to Mr and Mrs Balfour in the library. There, alone, the worst thought occurred to me. Something so painful that I had kept pushing it down, pushing it away, like if I buried it deep enough, under a thousand mundane tasks, I wouldn't have to face it.

If this wasn't -  _Gus._  Did that mean Gus - the real Gus - wouldn't have reciprocated - ?

I must have been a fool, a  _fucking_  mess, because this is what kept me up at night more than knowing that I was sharing my house with a  _thing._

_–_

 

> _Draugr_ : Old Norse. Etymology unclear. Possibly from proto-Germanic  _draugaz_ , lit. "delusion, illusion."

I kept going back to the library those last few days, I couldn't stop. I devoured everything I could find, like shoving my fingers into an open wound, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't lie to Gus about where I was either, but he let me be, I presumed since I went there only for my own company. That was another thing. The real Gus would never have been so simple as to not put two and two together about what I was actually doing over there. The thing in my bed was a puppet. I laughed. A  _corpse._  An imitation. A beautiful, unworldly,  _wrong_  imitation.

> _a shepherd killed by a draugr rises the next night as one himself._

This one played in my mind again and again. My fucking fault, that.

> _They exist to guard their treasure, wreak havoc on living beings, or torment those who wronged them in_   _the past._

_Guard their treasure._

I had put it together. I think I figured out why he was here. I couldn't forget the dates. He was on my doorstep the day after he was recovered. Why would he come here, to England, so far away from the waters surrounding Gruhuken? Nothing in life in England had wronged a man like him.

Nothing except me. And he clearly had not come to kill me, as much as I might have deserved it. But the thing was - and I was sure of it now, as much as it hurt to even entertain what it could mean - that he came for me.

_Guard their treasure._

He didn't care about his parents. He didn't care about his sister, Algie, his bones nor his plants.

I put my head in my hands. No one was in the library at this time of night; and no one could hear me weep.

_Oh, Gus._ You did love me.

–

Here's what I was going to do: Gus' parents, ever oblivious and ever grateful to my valiant, fruitless attempt to save their son, had already offered me the position once. I was going to Jamaica. The papers would be ready within weeks. The difficult part was making the arrangements for Isaak. I knew what his problem was now.

Poor Isaak. You were trying to warn me.

I couldn't tell Gus. I was too scared to.

I looked back on our days together. I realised just how many clues there had been. How many times I could have realised it, and wilfully did not. What could be expected of a man in love?

But I had to go. I couldn't live with  _it_. I couldn't live with the anger I saw, the possessiveness, now that I knew it didn't belong to Gus himself. It was dumb, it was disinterested. It had no love of life, of -  _anything._

It wasn't Gus.

Something kept clawing at me in these last few days. Did he know - that he  _wasn't_  Gus? The books said very little about the consciousness of such a creature. The thought inspired such endless pity in me that I almost considered cancelling my plan.

Amost.

Jamaica was far away from here. And from Gruhuken. Surely, it was far enough.

The day came. I looked at the beautiful face that looked like Gus, told it that I would be back soon, and went one final time to the 'library'. The airport, that was.

On the plane, I thought of Gus. The real Gus. Dead Gus. Not -

I felt the tears fall thickly in my lap.

Gus was warm, and kind. Gus, who had made me feel brave and smart and like an explorer. Not just  _comfortable_. I had made Gus swell with pride, with gratitude and admiration; _that_ was what I gave him. Not sick anger and jealousy.

Gus was not - this  _thing_.

I was doing the right thing. I was. I was.

I clenched my fists in his lap. I prayed through the queasiness and through the sheer  _guilt_ \- for one thing, just one thing.

_Don't follow me. Please, leave me. Just leave me alone._

I slept fitfully. When I opened my eyes, the plane was tilting to land over miles of lush greenery. I felt relief. It coursed through my veins like not even fear could, like not even guilt could.

Gus was gone. And God forgive me, I wanted him gone.

–

The house they gave me was far from the sea. I liked that, of course – the sea was everything that frightened me. I would work at an observatory. I couldn't have anything shipped, but the place they gave me was well-furnished when I arrived.

The first evening, after setting everything up, I came in alone to the kitchen after shopping for some food.

In the shadows, I saw a figure move. Or I imagined it. I went to get the lights, to be sure.

What I saw before me made the blood freeze in my veins.

"You always had such an extreme reaction to things, Jack."

He sounded frustrated.

I could have fainted. I  _wish_  I had fainted.

He came towards me. I was blinded, frozen in my spot. He came towards me and put his arms around me, and he smelled like Gus, and he was so warm and so  _nice._

"Did I upset you, somehow?" he asked gently.

I couldn't find my voice. I couldn't swallow. I couldn't - what could I do?

"Sit," he said. I did. He took my bag from my hands. "Do you want something to eat?"

–

I take back what I said, of course. The sea is not the thing that frightens me the most here. I am still afraid to go, but I think of it sometimes. I think of it a lot, actually, when I'm at work. I can see it from the window where I sit. I think of it especially whenever I have to go home soon. Maybe I could get a taxi there one evening, after work. People go crazy for the sea here. I hear the water is warm like a bath, and the waves turquoise and transparent like glass. At the observatory they'll do anything to get a little time away to go to the beach, they're always raving about it.  _It's like being caressed by the sun._

It would be like a caress, probably. I would be quick, at any rate, and it's not a long drive, so Gus probably wouldn't know. He wouldn't come out for me and stop me in time.

What stops me is knowing that I might just end up back in the same place.

 

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: suicidal ideation (only in the final scene), general stalker vibes


End file.
